My atrocious math aside, you miss the point of my post. (And really at $0.66 verses $0.02, either makes my point. Okay, we can all get a free band-aid now, woo hoo!)

My assertion was that you cannot provide the same guaranteed level of care that a veteran gets through the VA on a nationwide scale. Your point about everyone not needing the same dollar amount of health care is well taken, but irrelevant. It doesn't matter that some veterans will use more or less, my point was that on average, the VA can afford to spend $40,000 on each veteran before it is in danger of becoming insolvent because you have 20 tax payers supporting the care of 1 veteran.

If you flip the scenario and have 1 tax payer supporting the health care of 3 citizens, as would be the case with universal coverage, you no longer have a subsidized system like the VA. That doesn't mean universal health insurance is not feasible. It just means you cannot guarantee that it will function with the same quality of care as the VA does.

Again, the VA system is not a health insurance system, it is a system of taxpayer subsidized health care for veterans.

And by the way, 100 million is an accurate enough estimate, especially when you look at the fact that out of the 132 million tax returns filed in 2006, 43 million of showed a $0 tax liability. (link).

Do you know why the VA is so good? Do you know why veterans get such a good deal on health care?

It's because the VA is not universal health insurance, it's government subsidized health care. Veterans get such cheap health care because the all of the taxpayers in the U.S. pay to subsidize their health care.

The VA is not health insurance. It's a service we in the U.S. provide (and rightfully so!) to all of our Veterans in exchange for the invaluable military service they have provided us.

Any comparison of the the VA to any insurance based scheme of coverage is inherently flawed and impossible to make. There is no way an insurer, public or private, could provide the level of coverage the VA does at the same expense rate.

Think about it, it's simple math. Let's say there are 100 million tax payers in the U.S. and they all pay on average $2 in taxes that goes to support the VA. Let's further assume that there are 5 million veterans eligible for VA health benefits. That means you have $200 million to spend on 5 million people or about $40,000 per veteran for healthcare.

Let's assume that we go with universal insurance in the U.S with the same tax burden as the VA. Now that $200 million has to cover 300 million U.S. citizens. That's $0.02 a person. To get that same $40,000 per person coverage you would have need to generate 12 trillion dollars in revenue, or about $120,000 per tax payer in revenue.

Any comparison of the enduser costs of a VA member to the enduser costs of an insurer are impossible. With the VA you have the many supporting the few. With an insurer you at best many supporting many, and in the case of universal insurance few supporting many.

Here, you go buddy: Farmers & Merchants Bank v. Federal Res. Bank, 262 U.S. 649 (1923).

Yes, exactly, no State can issue currency unless its backed by Silver or Gold. The clause in no way limits the Federal Government from issuing fiat currency.

Remember your civics, state governments and the federal government are two autonomous governing bodies. The Constitution, specifically Article I Section 10, was about delineating the separation of powers between them.

I don't mean to put on my tinfoil hat, but why would the government want to censor when they can just start logging people's browsing histories at the router level.

At least right now (in theory) they have get a warrant to force an ISP to turn over it's history logs. But if they controlled the internet backbone they could just monitor and store logs of every website or IP you access.

Just imagine what power you could wield if you could threaten anyone with a public release of the list of porn sites (or other skeevy stuff) he or she has visted.

First, IAAL, take it for what it's worth. Second, by saying the following, I am in no way attempting to disparage the welfare state, or suggest that it is unconstitutional. In fact, there is plenty of case law suggesting it is. (Google "Lochner Era" and "economic substantive due process" if you want to find it.

That said, your reading of the Constitution is wrong.

The Preamble neither limits or grants any power to any branch of the Federal government. The Supreme Court has read it that way for the last hundred years. Source.

Article I Section 8 only gives the Federal government power to tax and spend for the general welfare:

The clause is not an independent grant of power, but a qualification of the taxing power. Any taxing and spending must be consistent with the rest of the Constitution. The clause does not give Congress any power to legislate any law it wants for the common welfare. Source.

Misinterpreting the efficacy of the preamble is understandable, even I had to look that up. But as for Art. I Sec. 8, if you are going to try to interpret the Constitution, at least read it! The limitations of the power are right in the text.